I don't want to jinx him or anything but Kluber has only allowed one ball hit out of the infield in the first four innings. He usually gets a lot of K's but tonight he's been a ground ball machine with no K's at all. He's averaging 9 pitches per inning.

I've been more impressed with Kluber as of late. And it's great to see anyone do well after seeing SUCK with guys such as Hagadone (still don't know why he is at the major league level at all), Cody Allen, Rich Hill.

tastybrownies wrote:I've been more impressed with Kluber as of late. And it's great to see anyone do well after seeing SUCK with guys such as Hagadone (still don't know why he is at the major league level at all), Cody Allen, Rich Hill.

The reason Hagadone is still here is very simple: They don't have anyone better in the entire organization.

tastybrownies wrote:I've been more impressed with Kluber as of late. And it's great to see anyone do well after seeing SUCK with guys such as Hagadone (still don't know why he is at the major league level at all), Cody Allen, Rich Hill.

The reason Hagadone is still here is very simple: They don't have anyone better in the entire organization.

Kinda sucks when you realize that we really don't have a better option.

Kluber's advanced stats indicated serious improvement on the horizon. Maybe they made an adjustment to give him some more tilt and make it easier to work down in the zone. If he can keep inducing ground balls at a high rate, thus limiting home runs, he'll be in great shape the rest of the way.

Ground ball guys who can K 20+% of hitters are a rare breed.

A God Damn dead man would understand that if a minor league bus in any city took a real sharp right turn, a Zack McCalister would likely fall out. - Lead Pipe

What a phenomenal effort from Corey Kluber tonight. He was good in New York except for that one inning that killed him, but a great bounceback start. Simply brilliant tonight. Showed a good changeup, really buried that cutter/slider in to LHB. Good life on the fastball. Really impressive.

A God Damn dead man would understand that if a minor league bus in any city took a real sharp right turn, a Zack McCalister would likely fall out. - Lead Pipe

skatingtripods wrote:What a phenomenal effort from Corey Kluber tonight. He was good in New York except for that one inning that killed him, but a great bounceback start. Simply brilliant tonight. Showed a good changeup, really buried that cutter/slider in to LHB. Good life on the fastball. Really impressive.

Not only that, but did you notice how he didn't even appear to be sweating at all? In 91º heat! Somehow that makes pitchers easier to watch. I still have nightmares about watching sweat dripping off the bill of Carmona's hat while he's walking the bases loaded in the first inning of an April game at Minnesota.

skatingtripods wrote:Kluber's advanced stats indicated serious improvement on the horizon. Maybe they made an adjustment to give him some more tilt and make it easier to work down in the zone. If he can keep inducing ground balls at a high rate, thus limiting home runs, he'll be in great shape the rest of the way.

Ground ball guys who can K 20+% of hitters are a rare breed.

If he keeps improving upon the control of that nasty slider he was chucking last night, we might have found something.

"All Beckett needs to do to cap off this mess is order some fried chicken and beer" – 5/10/12 before Beckett got chased in the 3rd at Fenway.

skatingtripods wrote:Kluber's advanced stats indicated serious improvement on the horizon. Maybe they made an adjustment to give him some more tilt and make it easier to work down in the zone. If he can keep inducing ground balls at a high rate, thus limiting home runs, he'll be in great shape the rest of the way.

Ground ball guys who can K 20+% of hitters are a rare breed.

If he keeps improving upon the control of that nasty slider he was chucking last night, we might have found something.

It might be part of Yan's catching, but that ump was calling a pretty low strike last night. For both teams. Though Kluber really was throwing some sick breaking shit.

Kluber gets a lot of love from Carson Cistulli over at Fangraphs, like here, here, and here. Eno Sarris of Fangraphs and Rotoworld was also tweeting about him last night.

He's a really interesting sabermetric case, mostly because of a high BABIP and pretty hefty HR rate. But he has a BB/9 under 2, a K/9 of almost 9, and the 9th-lowest rate of contact in the strike zone by the Fangraphs metrics (26th by PITCHf/x data). Yet his career ERA is 4.76. But his FIP is 3.87 and his xFIP is 3.60. His SIERA is 3.54. All of the advanced metrics say he's a very quality pitcher. The results haven't translated just yet.

He has periodic command issues that plague him for entire innings at a time where things snowball. If he can start limiting those, he'll be in great shape. I'm trying to track down his career stats on runs against. I don't think he's had very many innings where he has only given up one run. Usually, he runs into multi-run innings.

A little bit of a small sample size issue too, since he's thrown just 124.1 innings over parts of three seasons. But, it would appear that he's going to continue to improve and there's always room for a guy who doesn't walk people, misses bats, and gets ground balls. It's just a matter of consistency at this point.

A God Damn dead man would understand that if a minor league bus in any city took a real sharp right turn, a Zack McCalister would likely fall out. - Lead Pipe

skatingtripods wrote:Kluber gets a lot of love from Carson Cistulli over at Fangraphs, like here, here, and here. Eno Sarris of Fangraphs and Rotoworld was also tweeting about him last night.

He's a really interesting sabermetric case, mostly because of a high BABIP and pretty hefty HR rate. But he has a BB/9 under 2, a K/9 of almost 9, and the 9th-lowest rate of contact in the strike zone by the Fangraphs metrics (26th by PITCHf/x data). Yet his career ERA is 4.76. But his FIP is 3.87 and his xFIP is 3.60. His SIERA is 3.54. All of the advanced metrics say he's a very quality pitcher. The results haven't translated just yet.

He has periodic command issues that plague him for entire innings at a time where things snowball. If he can start limiting those, he'll be in great shape. I'm trying to track down his career stats on runs against. I don't think he's had very many innings where he has only given up one run. Usually, he runs into multi-run innings.

A little bit of a small sample size issue too, since he's thrown just 124.1 innings over parts of three seasons. But, it would appear that he's going to continue to improve and there's always room for a guy who doesn't walk people, misses bats, and gets ground balls. It's just a matter of consistency at this point.

What I saw last night was a guy who only lost focus when he got squeezed (inside and outside) on those two lead-off walks. At one point as he walked two guys in a row (7th?), Yan came out and calmed him down. But he was really locked-in for about 97% of his batters faced.

Guy had "Eye of the Tiger." Justin was giving him props/grief for it when he came out in the 8th. Only then did Kluber allowed himself to finally relax and crack a smile. All game long he looked like a pitcher who simply refused to lose.

/And he got some pretty good defense too. One play, as you mentioned, where he alertly covered first on a ground ball hit into the teeth of the shift. And the Brantley DP obviously.

bookelly wrote:What I saw last night was a guy who only lost focus when he got squeezed (inside and outside) on those two lead-off walks. At one point as he walked two guys in a row (7th?), Yan came out and calmed him down. But he was really locked-in for about 97% of his batters faced.

Gotta give him credit in the Andrus at bat. He came back from 3-0 and Andrus fouled off a good 3-2 pitch before walking on the seventh pitch. That's the sign of a pitcher who is growing up.

/And he got some pretty good defense too. One play, as you mentioned, where he alertly covered first on a ground ball hit into the teeth of the shift. And the Brantley DP obviously.

That DP upped the Tribe's win expectancy by 12% last night. Biggest play of the entire ballgame.

It's interesting that Kluber was so effective and only had four swings and misses. He had 13 in his last start against the Yankees and 14 in that start against Boston. He had really good stuff in that long rain delay game against Tampa too. That strange routine affected him (and Matt Moore) in his next start. We could very easily be talking about a pitcher with six straight quality starts and a 37/6 K/BB ratio in that span.

A God Damn dead man would understand that if a minor league bus in any city took a real sharp right turn, a Zack McCalister would likely fall out. - Lead Pipe

skatingtripods wrote:It's interesting that Kluber was so effective and only had four swings and misses. He had 13 in his last start against the Yankees and 14 in that start against Boston. He had really good stuff in that long rain delay game against Tampa too. That strange routine affected him (and Matt Moore) in his next start. We could very easily be talking about a pitcher with six straight quality starts and a 37/6 K/BB ratio in that span.

This might be overly simplifying things a bit - but if his trend of high KK and GBO are sustainable that certainly has to imply, or at the very least correlate to a pitcher with unbelievable command of the strike zone yes? A great righty who comes to mind is Adam Wainwright, though Kluber has a higher BB/9 ratio and a much higher BABIP. If those normalize out is Wainwright a legitimate comparable?

"All Beckett needs to do to cap off this mess is order some fried chicken and beer" – 5/10/12 before Beckett got chased in the 3rd at Fenway.

Regarding a Wainwright comp....I don't see it. I don't think he'll ever have Wainwright's HR rate and I don't think he'll be an innings horse like Waino. Kluber's not going to be a GB pitcher to the rate that Wainwright induces GBs either. I'd be curious to see how Wainwright would do in the AL, but I think it'd still be noticeably better than Kluber.

Kluber's GB rate at 44% is league average.

You'd be hard pressed to find a comp for Kluber that didn't really start pitching regularly in the bigs until 27 with similar numbers. Josh Beckett could be in the ballpark as a comp with a 3.94 ERA, 3.74 FIP, 3.66 xFIP, 8.34 K/9 and 2.74 BB/9. 43% GB rate. But Beckett was in the Show at 21. Maybe Ben Sheets, but he, too, was in the Show by 22.

A God Damn dead man would understand that if a minor league bus in any city took a real sharp right turn, a Zack McCalister would likely fall out. - Lead Pipe